3D art almost always liked me. When I was about 7 years I first saw these wonderful images that were in the yearbook of Donald Duck with their little glasses red-blue, and spent hours admiring the three-dimensional effect. Years later I did some testing with an analog camera, then a digital using cha-cha method (taking two photos in succession, slightly shifting the position of each other). This method has the disadvantage that can not be used with shifting scenes, because both photos must be two angles of the same scene. You take a beautiful landscape, and then, pairing the photos, you see that between one and another photo, the cow that was grazing walked two steps, or the tero took off wing.

Finally I decided to do an stereo array of cameras. As never I about money (fortunately), I could not afford to buy two expensive cameras, so I chose two Vivitar's Vivicam 3603z, 2 MP, fixed focus, no screen display, video enabled without sound. I paid something like U$S 30 each.

At first I put them side by side, but as the width of the cameras is 9.2 cm, close shots produced many "ghosts " and were unpleasant. So I decided, taking advantage of that the camera lenses are pretty close to an edge, invert one of them so that the distance between lenses is approximately 6.5 cm, which is the standard distance between the eyes. This type of arrangement is called "Z", stand in the way that looks slightly to Z.

This arrangement was much better, and I rushed to take pictures like crazy, with very good results for me. The timing of the shooting was purely mechanical, using a Z shaped lever, which almost always led to differences in the number of milliseconds between each photo. Later I soldered a thin wire to the microswitches of the triggers of both cams, which greatly improved the situation, although not solving it 100%

Soon came the problem of batteries: each camera uses three AAA alkaline batteries 1.5 V, they lasted only an afternoon. At this rate, I was having more expensive the collar than the dog. I bought six AAA rechargeable NiMH batteries, which cost me a lot, and found that as the voltage is only about 1.25 volts each, three cells are 3.75 V, which was barely sufficient to operate the cameras for a while. Then I realized that if I went on vacation with the cameras array, I should carry two chargers and 12 batteries to change both sets when the charge began to falter. I accounts, three batteries of 1.5 V are 4.5 V, four cells 1.25 V provide 5V. I guessed correctly that it would be preferable to feed the camera with FOUR rechargeable batteries, a bit larger if possible, because normally the electronic devices are designed with some tolerance in the voltage. I was lucky, and the problem of the batteries was reduced to a cosmetic issue, because now the contraption added a somewhat bulky backpack of 4 AA batteries.

Moreover, often going to use cameras I found that the power did not come on one or both, because low voltages are particularly sensitive on good contacts, preferably they must be in gold, and mine were, hopefully, bronze. I had to take precautions in every contact, making sure everyone was sufficiently firm and protected as not to loosen or do leak with use.

Another problem that was not annoying at first, because the satisfaction that finally gave me the power to do all 3D pictures I wanted, was to fix the low stiffness, producing photos a bit missaligned in all possible axes: horizontal (convergence) vertical and tilt. At that point I had already discovered the Imagen3D free program, which was newly hatched, and allowed me to manage these misalignments, so I did not too much trouble. But eventually it ends up tired me, and after my recent vacation in Patagonia Argentina, I decided to dismantle the array, save what I could, redo what was not working, and reset all, reinforcing it better.

And by the way, I decided to document the process to make this instructable.

To reduce the deviation of the cameras from the desired alignment was necessary to add each one a top and a supporter. The top prevents each camera to tilt toward the body of the settlement, since the resistance of the iron angle is not enough to prevent it. Consider that a few hundredths of mm represent degrees. The supporter prevents lean back or forward, wasting the horizontal optical axis.

Looking profile one can detect big misalignments, but for a final alignment is essential to make several pairs 3D, tweak the arrangement according to the result, and to perfect the device by trial and error.

It can be seen that the axes of the objectives are not parallel, they must converge to a point about 2.5 to 3 meters away, which simplifies the pairing of photos at processing time. Another equally important advantage is that, been lighting conditions very similar to both cams when they point to the same place, you can expect more simultaneous shots. At some point I thought about putting a hinge to allow me to vary the convergence, but I chickened out just thinking about alignment problems that so simple added would cause to me.

After three successive adjustments, one of which involved everything apart and put it back together, here are three 3d pairs produced by the arrangemement, without any further correction in the alignment. I put the image left to right so you can see how CES (Crossed Eyes Stereogram). I used Imagen3D to do it.

Maybe you can see the larger size images, that fill the screen.(Yes, clicking on the i that appears in the upper left corner, it displays a screen that gives the option to view original size image).

I can make videos without sound up to 20 seconds with this cameras, but I don't decided to make one. If there is any interested, I will do.